Slashdot Mirror
UK Proposes Mandatory Age Verification For Porn Sites (mirror.co.uk)
A proposed bill read in the House of Commons, "suggests that by next year websites will require visitors to prove they are of legal age before entering..." reports the Mirror. Britain's prime minister "says none of Britain's top 10 porn sites -- which account for 52% of all views -- have a 'robust' process to verify users' age," citing figures that 10% of the site's viewers are below the age of 18. The Independent adds that "the issue has alarmed privacy campaigners, since it could mean having to register a credit card with a porn website."
U.K. lawyer Neil Brown contacted Slashdot with more on the age-verification requirement:
Sites which failed to do so could face fines of up to 250,000 pounds or 5% of annual turnover. Their URLs could also be given to ISPs and payment processing providers, to consider voluntary blocking/service suspension, although no mandatory blocking regime is planned currently.
This is the same bill that proposes jail terms up to 10 years for those found guilty of copyright infringement. According to the article, one 2013 study found that 7% of the world's porn was hosted in the UK, with 60% in America and 26% in the Netherlands.
This is the same bill that proposes jail terms up to 10 years for those found guilty of copyright infringement. According to the article, one 2013 study found that 7% of the world's porn was hosted in the UK, with 60% in America and 26% in the Netherlands.
Great, another reason for businesses to abandon the sinking ship that is the UK economy.
Unless I'm missing something, how exactly do they plan to enforce this for overseas sites?
Or is this going to end up with some braindead ISP filter saying: "I see you're trying to access a porn site, I've logged that for you, now confirm who you are so I can log that too (under the guise of letting you have access once verified)"
Privacy invasion, much.
It's the job of the parents to control access to the internet from their house, not the state. If the state has to do this, then perhaps the parents should be held more responsible?
Good luck with that. I'm sure the whole world of waiting to comply.
every time i see some weird killswitch legislation proposed in the UK im boggled as to how this gets implemented...I mean, if I were a UK sysadmin would I just be handed a list of network routes I had to drop? or is there a python script i write that scrapes emails from my boss to figure out who I send nastygrams to after shutting down their server?
What if the server is a virtual host? do i have to shut everything down then? a single route? all routes? Just because little catherine saw her first penis, does it mean I have to suspend an account that controls the website for a favourite tea brand?
Good people go to bed earlier.
They don't have to "know" anything. It's just rhetoric to get elected and stay in office, which to that end is perfectly suitable. Nothing to see here...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Use a proxy, claim to be from X which doesn't require this. Problem solved.
Am I missing something? Serious question...
It's sick how the politicians are using their usual excuse of "think of the children" to attack the free internet via porn, while they let paedophile (pedophile) gangs roam UK's treats for decades, even police and social services helping these gangs commit their crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
But just as bad, while politicians have a fetish over banning porn, they have no problem having 24/7 violence on TV. How many people are killed with sex, and how many people killed because TV gives impression to people that violence is ok?
It's all a smokescreen to control the internet, most people too stupid to see it, they are just fixated on the control porn argument.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
This is the brainchild of Andrea Leadsom, one of the two final contestants for leadership of the Tory party (and hence the post of PM until the next general election). According to a comment on this story on The Register, she already has a reputation around Westminster as a "self-serving simpleton". Theresa May (the other contestant) is generally expected to win.
Perhaps if David Cameron had internet porn he would have known that there are better places to put your manhood than a pigs head.
Britain's prime minister "says none of Britain's top 10 porn sites -- which account for 52% of all views...
Ok... lost me right there... where can I find that list?
Unless I'm missing something, how exactly do they plan to enforce this for overseas sites?
Or is this going to end up with some braindead ISP filter saying: "I see you're trying to access a porn site, I've logged that for you, now confirm who you are so I can log that too (under the guise of letting you have access once verified)"
Privacy invasion, much.
It's the job of the parents to control access to the internet from their house, not the state. If the state has to do this, then perhaps the parents should be held more responsible?
I find it amusing how conservatives, who are usually the most energetic at raging against regulations and the mommy state, are the most eager to impose mountains of regulations, draconian censorship and generally the mommy state on the public in order to regulate other people's sexual behaviour. In fact it is downright creepy how obsessed they are over who other people might be having sex with in the privacy of their bedrooms and how they are doing it, or in this case what they are using their laptops or tablet computers and tissue dispensers for in the privacy of their bedrooms.
Panic not, it won't happen.
This is the brainchild of Andrea Leadsom, one of the two final contestants for leadership of the Tory party (and hence the post of PM until the next general election). According to a comment on this story on The Register, she already has a reputation around Westminster as a "self-serving simpleton". Theresa May (the other contestant) is generally expected to win.
I got that impression too, i.e. that May will win. Having said that, I watched Leadsom being grilled pretty hard by some parliamentary committee on YouTube yesterday and she seemed eloquent enough so I wouldn't exactly call Leadsom a 'simpleton', but she does not make the impression of being the kind of Machiavellian psychopath that you need to be to win a Tory party leadership election and then stay in that position for any length of time. It probably also helps to have a patch of lizard armour-skin grafted onto your back if you want to be leader of the Tory party .... the ides of March, knives in the dark and all that.... But then again, who knows? Leadsom might surprise us, it's the seemingly totally ordinary ones you have to watch out for according to the FBI's profilers. I'm certainly looking forward to how this all ends. The British press is already calling this Tory leadership election: "The Whitehall chainsaw massacre". Somebody should make a comedy sketch based on that theme. It's pity that Spitting Image isn't on air anymore.
Yes, as I [mis]understand this, it has to go to the Tory (Conservative, for readers abroad) party membership in September. Leadsome is/was a 'leaver', a Brexiteer, May isn't. The non-London members may well be a majority of 'leavers', who might feel that May's heart is not in 'leaving'. Who knows?
Incidentally, May is a great image-person and self-publicist but her actual level of achievement is less than stellar, see: http://order-order.com/2016/07... which was pulled from the (right wing) Daily Telegraph.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
"This is the brainchild of Andrea Leadsom, one of the two final contestants for leadership of the Tory party..."
Who by current indications will be eating a boiled kangaroo's anus on I'm A Celebrity in about 12 month's time. This, however, is only a tiny compensation for the fact that Teresa May will become PM.
On a general note, what can be done about the policy ratchets that these people advocate? That is, the belief that things are bad because the policies that brought them about (eg financialisation, under investment in social infrastructure, wealth concentration, mass surveillance, censorship, etc.) were simply not implemented hard enough.
This is the essence of what people like May and Leadsom believe: like a sort of Taliban approach to politics. Corporation tax in the UK is lower than almost anywhere in the EU and we have intense austerity policies partly as a result. So what do we do - we lower it some more because *obviously* the economy isn't getting better as a result of the previous lowering. What happens if we lower corporation tax to zero then? Where is the evidence that these policies are working as they are right now, let alone that they will work better for being all the more extreme?
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Responsible parents could arguably control Internet access for their children from their house, but not so easily from e.g. WiFi hotspots or libraries.
These crusty politicans have no idea how the internet works. Sad, really.
Actually the only ideas they may have is about how to be (re)elected. Hopefully they are often plain wrong about this too.
If you're implying this is a dupe, well, it isn't.
Ratings for websites != Age verification for websites.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Having websites act as parents isn't an efficient solution. Teach parents how to use decent parental control software and about the importance to monitoring what their children do online (not just porn) would be far more effective.
This issue will probably get less over time as the current generation of internet and computer illiterate parents are gradually replaced by the next generation that grew up with the internet and won't need a state sponsored course in this.To be honest I think one of the bigger issues is every parent buying their child a laptop each, yeah it can be great for entertainment and education but at least with a family computer it's in a place where you can see what they're doing without having to spy and it'd be very embarrassing to be caught looking at porn in the dining room or kitchen.
I think I know and/or have a plan for managing the internet when I have kids, and while the first time they go on a porn site won't immediately lead to punishment it will at least allow me to know that a conversation about it is necessary as well as discussion on an age when it might be appropriate.
It will no longer be cool and exciting and instead be boring and uninteresting
Speak for yourself.
I find modern economics, which is what leads to the disaster we have when it comes to government and the actual economy, to be an absurd house of cards. Most of their basic concepts are ok as abstract concepts, but then they apply math on the basis of 'if everything else is the same'. With a blissful ignorance that the factors they chose to look at may not be the only factors in question.
Even 'simple' concepts like 'supply and demand' have some exterior items that can mean more than price (which is all the concept looks at). So you've made a product, what if no one cares about your product and has no use for it? Well S&D says a low enough price and lots of people should want to buy it, but if your 'audience' is so small that even at cost you can't get more than a handful of people to buy them then your going out of business.
The same holds true for the idea that somehow not taxing corporations (where the majority of money is 'owned') will somehow magically make them stop hording money and instead spend more. A corporation will always hold to it's own interests as a collective entity and that interest is in ways to make more money, not so much to spend it. While spending some money to make more money is also a basic principle, a corporation that is successful will minimize expenses any way it can. If we already understand they will spend as little as possible, then how in the world can this idea ever ever ever work?
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
If you're ashamed to do it then don't do it Or fully live your shame.
study found that 60% of the world's porn was hosted in America
I knew America was still number 1 at something.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Not that either proposal has much merit, of course, for similar reasons.
give credit card details to a porn site,
you're pulling my dick!
Go well
We already have that: teens restricted by ASBOs to their council estates. In other news, teenage pregnancies are on the rise.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
No it doesn't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yeah, where's the verification bill requiring that car companies prove people have a driver's licence before operating their vehicles? One of these leads to wanking, the other leads to death....
The mistake we make is in judging political entities by the liberties they endorse.
Instead we should recognize that all political entities believe in regulating the behaviors they believe are counter-productive to their world view or they believe prevent achieving their goals.
"Yeah, it's all fish fingers and custard"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sure, it's very easy to lose all your visitors, too, if that's your goal. It's not like there aren't millions of other porn sites out there for free.
Frankly, I think if one has the capacity to lie when they click the "Yes, I'm over 18" button, then it is perfectly acceptable they have a healthy wank in the privacy of their own homes. I'd much rather they do that than knock up the girl next door.
I really don't care what other people do in their bedrooms. If I'm not involved, I'm not interested. I don't understand the mindset of people who care enough to make it a public issue. They must have had a bad experience during toilet-training, I guess.
Unless I'm missing something, how exactly do they plan to enforce this for overseas sites?
/quote>
Use their position in the EU to enforce it against the 26% of porn hosted in the Netherlands, as well as other locations in the EU.... oh, wait ....
Thanks, I'll be here forever. Try the veal.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Rather than requiring foreign sites to adapt, the ISP level porn blockers could be adapted to do this: require an account's owner be age verified. How you separate access from an authorised machine at a home address from one which is not is another matter, but I doubt it's that hard. My worry is that this is more of a political stunt to win votes from conservative votes with tradition-derived anti-sex attitudes, and to try and win the religous vote to the Tories away from Labour: compassion and care for the poor vs anti-porn/sex/gay policy. Sensible followers of religion should be more interested in the former, but I fear the latter is more easy to motivate political support for amongst those (swing voters) who would waver between Lab and Con at an election. In additon, those who care about the ability to access porn for people who are not underage are likely too small a minority to have an effect at the ballot box.
John_Chalisque
I've had quite an argument with a professor of economics and she felt that S&D said exactly that. For a low enough price it should effectively 'create demand'. She used free pins advertising causes of all sorts as a 'perfect example' where people take them just because they are free. And if you were talking about my mom or grandmother who are/were packrats then yes it's sort of true. However I have no need or desire for a useless piece of metal even when they are free and would turn it down. My argument was that in some niche aspect: yes, some people may 'buy' it. However this group is composed solely of 'I'd take anything that was free' and I think we can rule that out of being an effective part of the economy.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Seriously, what the hell is this supposed to do, aside of pretty much kill the only industry in Britain that's not been hit by the Brexit already? Nobody outside the Isle of Splendid Isolation gives halve a fuck about their laws, so the only thing this will affect is that porn providers outside GB will cater to British tastes more in an attempt to attract Brits as customers.
And of course any and all porn in Britain will do what the rest of the industry already does: Pack up and leave.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I couldn't stand how Micro-Economics was taught in the 90's. The professor was attempting to explain "supply and demand" in relation to cost. Two coffee shops, one with coffee that costs X, another with coffee that costs more than X. So which coffee shop sells more coffee?
So I ask, "which one is closer|more convenient to get to?" Not Relevant
What do you mean not relevant? If there's a coffee shop downstairs (in the cafeteria) with $2 coffee, and there's coffee for $1 - 5 blocks away, that takes 30+ mins round trip, then it doesn't matter much that coffee is cheaper. Convenience dictates that you'll get coffee from the cafeteria; demand will be higher for the more expensive coffee .
No, Supply, Demand, and Cost disregard convenience and all other external factors.
Which is round about where I gained the belief that the world of economics is complete bullshit.
factors for choosing a coffee shop
1 price
2 location
3 type and quality of coffee
4 "social" factors
5 environmental factors
6 other items available
7 formats/ presentation of goods
and thats just a cup of coffee
Apparently no politician anywhere on the planet understands even basic technology, let alone how the internet works. You can't dictate things like this to websites that are owned and wholly hosted outside the borders of your country. Therefore your 'morality legislation', like all 'morality legislation', falls flat on it's face right out of the gate. Even China's 'great firewall' isn't 100% effective and opens the door to all sorts of abuse of it's abilities.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: at the rate things are going, we're going to end up with NO internet at all, only 'walled gardens' within national borders, that are utterly useless for anything serious due to lack of connectivity and too many controls, along with a useless substitute for actual encryption.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Yeah, where's the verification bill requiring that car companies prove people have a driver's licence before operating their vehicles? One of these leads to wanking, the other leads to death....
I've yet to see a dealer not demand to see your license, and make a copy of it, before letting you get into a car.
Also your insurance, the last few I've got have checked that too, and told me I needed to check with the insurance company.
And I think, but I'm not sure, but they also had to tell me to go register my vehicle.
My libraries WiFi and desktops seem to be pretty locked down. Never tried to access porn there but I did get kicked off for trying to upload a zip file to a ftp site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Insightful +1
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
There's also the people who see a way to exploit it.
"Ohh, this company is giving away free pens. Let's see... the pen has an aluminium body. Cool. What's the scrap value for aluminium? I'll take two million pens, please."
It is really good to see that the Tories, having fixed that pesky EU brexit problem, have moved on to the next important issue already.
It just shows what they are really after - now, with the EU regulations possibly out of the window, they can get rid of stupid commie crap like worker protections, human rights or privacy protections. Let's do everything to make the rich even richer and screw everyone else.
I assume using someone else's credit card without authorization is a crime in Great Britain.
If it's not, well, nevermind then.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So?
GB never lost sovereignty, they gave it added value by combining it with that of other EU nations.
Basically people were too lazy to follow the news and read the tabloids instead.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I find it amusing how conservatives, who are usually the most energetic at raging against regulations and the mommy state, are the most eager to impose mountains of regulations, draconian censorship and generally the mommy state on the public in order to regulate other people's sexual behaviour. I
This goes for conservatives (Republicans) in the US as well. They're against regulation of businesses, but they sure are happy about regulating people's personal life..
I didn't say that Merkel was any better than Cameron. Actually, for someone who allegedly studied physics he's a pretty big dimwit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've yet to see a dealer not demand to see your license, and make a copy of it, before letting you get into a car.
Also your insurance, the last few I've got have checked that too, and told me I needed to check with the insurance company.
And I think, but I'm not sure, but they also had to tell me to go register my vehicle.
License, yes. Insurance, you can just call your insurance company while you're there and tell them you've done it and they go "okay!" Registration, yes, and they usually file it for you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Two coffee shops, one with coffee that costs X, another with coffee that costs more than X. So which coffee shop sells more coffee?
So I ask, "which one is closer|more convenient to get to?" Not Relevant
It's unfortunate that your professor was apparently unable to explain this in a way you would understand, but the reason that these extra factors are not relevant is that for the purpose of the illustration they have already been included in the cost. To take your example:
If there's a coffee shop downstairs (in the cafeteria) with $2 coffee, and there's coffee for $1 - 5 blocks away, that takes 30+ mins round trip, then it doesn't matter much that coffee is cheaper.
The cost of the first cup is $2 and a walk downstairs, while the cost of the second cup is $1 and 30 minutes of travel. Which one is cheaper overall depends on how each individual values money vs. convenience. You can be sure, however, that—given equivalent products—the customers are each going to pick the one that they perceive as having the lower cost. Demand is not higher for the more expensive coffee; rather, the coffee with the lower advertised price is actually the more expensive one due to the distance aspect.
Classes on economics tend to make the simplifying assumption that all costs are in the form of currency for practical reasons, to keep the class productively focused on the main principles rather than chasing irrelevancies. These extra factors almost always have an equivalent value in currency, so it makes sense to phrase everything in those terms. (E.g.: How much would you be willing to pay to avoid the 30 minute round trip? OK, add that amount to the cost of the more distant cup and then disregard the travel.)
In the more advanced classes you should learn how to apply these same fundamental principles to the unsimplified scenarios, but from the sound of it you probably gave up before reaching that point.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The dealer yes, how is he the car company? The ISP knows you're an adult, they have a signed contract with you, like the dealer does. I never signed anything with Mazda for my last car.
Is this some strange American thing where all the cars are owned by the car company and you only purchase the right to use them?
Next time you're at DeVry ask her what would be the case if they were dipped in shit from an ebola hospital.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I get it now that I'm an old man, and have read more about debt, politics, economics, et al over the last 20+ years.
Yet in the 90's, I looked at it as a programmer, Supply | Demand are variables, they have external influences - that affect them, except the Prof short-circuited that whole idea - which turned it into a big disconnect for myself.
In the "Real World", I would say my concept|question back then was correct. Supply and Demand ARE affected by external influences, but all those external influences aren't modeled within micro-economics, they just change the vector points for Supply and Demand.